Assistant Professor, Behavioral and Brain Sciences Program Dr. Herzberg is recruiting graduate students this year, to begin Ph.D. studies in Fall 2026. Dr. Max Herzberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia, beginning in the Fall of 2025. He is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist interested in the impact of stressful environments on the developing brain and subsequent adaptive and maladaptive behavioral outcomes. Dr. Herzberg received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 2020, working under the mentorship of Drs. Kathleen Thomas and Megan Gunnar. He completed a T32 funded postdoctoral research fellowship with Drs. Deanna Barch and Joan Luby in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis. Education Education: 2020 - 2025: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis 2020: Ph.D., Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota 2014: B.A., Grinnell College Research Research Interests: My research interests are centered on the ways in which stressful environments impact structural and functional brain development and subsequent adaptive and maladaptive behavioral outcomes. I use a variety of analysis techniques for MRI data, including task-based fMRI analysis, seed-based and whole-brain approaches to resting-state functional connectivity, and, recently, new measures indexing plasticity in the developing brain. In my early research, I investigated the effects of early life adversity on brain development, particularly in youth who had experienced international orphanage care. These studies focused on brain structure and function and their impact on behavioral outcomes, including risk-taking behaviors and psychopathology symptoms. More recently, my research has focused on the ways in which socioeconomic status shapes brain structure, function, and risk for psychopathology, particularly the development of internalizing symptoms. Research in the lab will continue these themes while exploring new methods for better understanding individual differences in sensitivity to the environment via in vivo measures of neuroplasticity in infants and adolescents. Selected Publications Selected Publications: Herzberg, M. P., Nielsen, A. N., Luby, J., & Sylvester, C. M. (2024). Measuring neuroplasticity in human development: The potential to inform the type and timing of mental health interventions. Neuropsychopharmacology, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-024-01947-7 Herzberg, M. P., Nielsen, A. N., Brady, R., Kaplan, S., Alexopoulos, D., Meyer, D., Arora, J., Miller, J. P., Smyser, T. A., Barch, D. M., Rogers, C. E., Warner, B. B., Smyser, C. D., & Luby, J. L. (2024). Maternal prenatal social disadvantage and neonatal functional connectivity: Associations with psychopathology symptoms at age 12 months. Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001708 Herzberg, M. P., Tillman, R., Kandala, S., Barch, D. M., & Luby, J. (2022). Preschool Depression and Hippocampal Volume: The Moderating Role of Family Income. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2022.04.018 Herzberg, M. P. (2022). Risk Markers Are Not One Size Fits All. Biological Psychiatry, 92(12), e49–e50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.09.019 Herzberg, M. P., McKenzie, K. J., Hodel, A. S., Hunt, R. H., Mueller, B. A., Gunnar, M. R., & Thomas, K. M. (2021). Accelerated maturation in functional connectivity following early life stress: Circuit specific or broadly distributed? Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 48, 100922. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100922 For a full list of publications, see my Google Scholar Profile
